324 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



are 550 pages of more or less digested matter, lucid and synthetic in some 

 of the earlier chapters on metabolism, assimilation, respiration, &c. — 

 obscure and fragmentary in, for example, such a section as that on electrical 

 currents, where neither author nor translator seems to have an idea of 

 the work that has been done by Waller and others since the publication 

 of Biedermann's " Elektro-Physiologie " (the latest work quoted) in 1895. 

 In these days vegetable physiology can no more than animal physiology be 

 confined to one laboratory or to one author, and little progress will be 

 made in the solution of its countless problems until this development is 

 appreciated. It is, moreover, obvious that with Pfeffer's " Physiology of 

 Plants " to hand, in the scholarly form of its English translation, a new 

 compilation could only be of value if thoroughly up to date and complete 

 in all its details. But in this book the admirable system of footnotes by 

 which the editor of Pfeffer brings his translations of vols, i., ii., and iii. 

 in 1900, 1903, and 1906, respectively, up to date, has not been adopted. The 

 author contents himself with interpolations in square brackets in the text, 

 a method which leads to considerable confusion — on the surface at any 

 rate. The student wants his facts presented in tangible form, without the 

 battledore and shuttlecock of chronological order. As an instance, the 

 argument on pp. 107-110 is difficult to disentangle, as it would certainly 

 appear at first sight as though the conclusions which Alolisch drew 

 from assimilation effected by " dried dead cells " were in favour of the 

 modern view that chlorophyll may, apart from the living protoplasmic 

 basis of the choroplast, carry out the photolytic function. Whereas 

 p. 110 shows that he attributes the continuance of the function in 

 " dead " cells to a " survival " of the protoplasm. Surely this debatable 

 ground w T ould, from the student's point of view, be better in a footnote, 

 and clearly differentiated from classical matter. 



In this connection, too, it may be remarked that the bibliographies 

 at the end of each chapter — an excellent feature — have not always been 

 brought up to date in accordance with the interpolations. Up to 

 Chapter X. no notice is taken of these, compare pp. 90, 95, 98, 110, 112. 

 In Chapter X., re p. 130, no reference is given to the paper containing the 

 " very careful researches of Brown and Escombe in 1904 " ; and in 

 Chapter XVII., re p. 214, the bibliography gives no reference to the hand- 

 book by Lafar which the text praises so highly. In this particular the utility 

 of the work is impaired for the student who looks on the bibliography as 

 an indication of what is referred to in the text. 



The chemical portions of the book (under Metabolism) are most 

 interesting, and appear to be more fully worked out than in Pfeffer. 

 Such are the classification of proteins and conversion of the products 

 of assimilation (with much that is new on enzyme action), respiration, 

 fermentation, symbiosis, &c. Under the heading Metamorphosis there is 

 a comprehensive account of the external modifications produced by gall- 

 parasites, and of the internal correlations exemplified in the effect of 

 grafts, disturbances of nutrition, injury, and regeneration, Sec. — a subject 

 now attracting much interest abroad under the ugly name of " experi- 

 mental teratology." 



In short, a great part of the book is (supplementary to Pfeffer, and, 

 given a certain knowledge of morphology, which is here taken for granted), 



